Alcoholic beverage

“ While it is true that the former claim is in a measure correct, it is a fact well understood by those who have given the matter study that they are perhaps the most unwholesome of all alcoholic beverages. Those in the habit of using them are almost universally under the impression that they are harmless, and as the taste for them is easily cultivated, those who once acquire the habit are very apt to take them in greater or less quantities daily. ”

“ De-natured Alcohol and De-naturing Formulæ
The uses of alcohol are very numerous and varied, the principal being, of course, for the production of all alcoholic liquors such as brandy, gin, rum, whiskey, liquors, etc.; that distilled from grain is almost entirely consumed in the manufacture of whiskey, gin, and British brandy. In the arts, strong alcohol is employed by the perfumers and makers of essences for dissolving essential oils, soaps, etc., and for extracting the odor of flowers and plants ”

“ This is found to be true not only of those who use whiskey and other strong liquors, but also of those who use fermented drinks, as wine and beer. Beer drinkers are much more likely to suffer from disease than those who are strictly temperate. It is often noticed by physicians that when a beer-drinker becomes sick or meets with an accident, he does not recover so readily as one who uses no kind of alcoholic drinks. ”

“ Not many years ago a vast majority of medical men unhesitatingly affirmed, on scientific grounds, that the use of alcoholic drinks is beneficial and even necessary, and much ridicule was lavished on those who, relying upon personal taste and practical experience, took the contrary view. ”

“ Hundreds of medical men order alcoholic liquors from habit, from ignorance of their real effect, from fashion, or from a desire to please, or not to offend, their patients. Port-wine is constantly being ordered when persons are recovering from various diseases ”

“ Where the great danger lies is that the widely heralded reduction of the alcoholic content and the claim of the brewers that beer is now to be classed as a true temperance drink will tend to greatly deceive the public and thus largely increase its consumption, in most cases to cause "the same intoxicating effect as before." ”

“ No, indeed! you think; but probably no one who has become a drunkard ever intended to do so. They all began [92] with one glass, a few drops of some alcoholic liquor,—cider, wine, or beer perhaps,—and thus learned to love the taste of alcohol, and soon became its slaves. For this poison has the strange power of making those who drink it want more and more of itself, though they know it is doing them harm.
The only safety is in letting alcoholic liquors alone, forever. ”

“ Brudenell Carter mentions a case in his own experience of an old gentleman who lived for many months in moderate strength and comfort and without any remarkable emaciation upon alcoholic drinks alone. Dr. Thomas Inman, in a paper read before the British Medical Association, gives an instance of a lady who twice in succession nursed a child, subsisting upon each occasion during the greater part of twelve months upon brandy and bitter ale alone; the children, he adds, grew up strong and healthy. ”

“ It is also certain that hundreds make use of alcoholic liquors who have no necessity for them, and who would be better without them. Those who require them most are men who lead a studious sedentary life; and it is such men, also, who suffer most from excess in the use of alcoholic liquors. ”

“ Nothing is more false than the belief that the progressive dislodgement of other alcoholic drinks by beer will diminish the destructive influences of alcoholism. * * * It has been conclusively established by thousandfold experiments that soldiers in all climates, in heat, cold and rain, endure best the most fatiguing marches when they are absolutely deprived of alcoholic drinks.”—Prof. ”

“ Are we to knock the heads out of all our wine-casks, join the temperance society, and denounce all men who do not follow our example? Taking together all that science and observation teach and indicate, we have one certainty: That, to a person in good health and of good life, alcoholic liquors are not necessary, but are always in some degree hurtful. This truth becomes so clear, after a few weeks' investigation, that I advise every person who means to keep on drinking such liquors not to look into the facts ”

“ Hence, supposing two meals are taken daily, the beer-drinker daily imbibes 30 grammes less of alcohol than the wine-drinker; and this difference amounts in the course of the year to nearly 11 kilogrammes, or 14 litres (equivalent to 24 lbs. or 3 gallons) , of anhydrous alcohol.”
Examples without number might be collected of men who habitually used alcoholic drinks sometimes in moderation, sometimes, in what we, in these latter days, should certainly consider excess, and who yet lived in health and usefulness to the extreme boundary of human life. ”

“ The stanch old soakers, on the other hand,—men who, if put on tap, would have yielded a red alcoholic liquor by way of blood,—usually confined themselves to plain brandy-and-water, gin, or West India rum; and, oftentimes, they prefaced their dram with some medicinal remark as to the wholesomeness and stomachic qualities of that particular drink. ”

“ The yearly per capita consumption of alcoholic liquors, which rose from 8.79 gallons in 1880 to 17.76 in 1900 and 22.79 in 1911, fell in 1912 to 21.98. It is to be devoutly hoped that the tide will ebb as rapidly as it rose. What should be our attitude toward the use of alcoholic liquors by others? ”

“ The poisonous element in all forms of intoxicating drinks, and the one so fraught with danger to the bodily tissues, is the alcohol they contain. The proportion of the alcoholic ingredient varies, being about 50 per cent in brandy, whiskey, and rum, about 20 to 15 per cent in wines, down to 5 per cent, or less, in the various beers and cider; but whether the proportion of alcohol be more or less, the same element of danger is always present. ”

“ That they are a product of the brewery has caused them to be looked upon with suspicion by cautious people, but the multitude has apparently given no thought, or care, as to whether or not they may be alcoholic. ”

“ There is some water in the food we eat, but not enough to supply the wants of the body.
Some persons think that the body needs beer or wine to keep it in good order. These liquids, as well as whisky, brandy, and rum, are called alcoholic drinks. The latest experiments and studies show that the body never needs alcoholic drinks to keep it in the best of health. These drinks sometimes make the body sick, and if much alcohol is taken at one time, the person becomes dizzy, staggers, and may fall down and go to sleep. ”

“ It is not the drunkard's appetite that is transmitted, but the bias or proclivity which renders the subject of such an inherited tendency more susceptible to exciting causes, and therefore in greater danger from the use of alcoholic drinks than others. ”

“ Alcoholic liquors are, to my mind, not only not valuable, but distinctly disadvantageous, in the treatment of disease, except in rare instances, as for example in the initial chill of some acute infectious disease. ”

“ This is exactly what they are doing when coca, and the so-called food wines are placed in their hands as medicine. They like the pleasant taste, there is the call of habit and appetite, and so there arises the greatest possible danger of a general liking for alcoholic liquors being set up. The ailing man or woman of set years is in similar danger, for they are having recourse to alcohol when their powers of mind and body are to some extent exhausted, and they are thus less able to resist the fascination for alcohol that may so quickly be brought into existence. ”

“ Wines are also made from other fruits and vegetables, such as oranges, currants, tomatoes, and rhubarb, but the alcohol which they contain is of the same nature in all cases, whether the fermented liquor has been manufactured in great quantities, by large presses, or by a simple domestic process for home consumption. It is important to remember this fact, as many people do not associate alcohol with such beverages as domestic wines and home-brewed ales, whereas it is always present with the same treacherous qualities which attach to it everywhere. ”

“ The error is in supposing that any alcoholic liquor is nourishing, or strengthening. They are neither. Alcohol does not nourish, but it pulls down; it does not strengthen, but excites and exhausts, for every stimulation is necessarily followed by a period of depression, and this is inevitably unfavorable to the patient.
"There is a grave responsibility resting on the physician who prescribes alcoholic liquor. ”

“ The southern nations of Europe using wine daily and knowing well the process of distillation to help them to make stronger drink for many hundreds of years, now exhibit much less tendency to over-indulgence in strong drink than the northern nations whose ancestors have only in comparatively recent times been subjected to the temptation of craving for strong alcoholic liquors. The attitude of any nation toward alcohol is a function of the length of time that nation has had a chance to procure strong drink easily. ”

“ Alcohol is doomed; it is going it is gone. Yet when I think of a hot Scotch on a winter evening, or a Tom Collins on a summer morning, or a gin Rickey beside a tennis-court, or a stein of beer on a bench beside a bowling-green—I wish somehow that we could prohibit the use of alcohol and merely drink beer and whisky and gin as we used to. ”

“ When strong alcohol is exposed to the air, it absorbs moisture and becomes diluted; at the same time, the spirit itself evaporates. The commercial or proof spirit is about one half water; the strongest holds five per cent; and to obtain absolute or waterless alcohol, requires careful distillation in connection with some substance, as lime, that has a still greater affinity for water, and so can despoil the alcohol. ”

“ The experience of millions in the United Kingdom prove to a demonstration that the use of alcoholic drinks are unnecessary for the health and comfort of man; there are sixty thousand of our fellow creatures, in this country alone every year falling a prey, to the influence of this spirit upon their system, and be it remembered their numbers are made up from those who boast of their temperance, and would shudder at the thought of ever becoming drunkards ”

“ The process is continued until the alcoholic content of the distilled liquor has considerably diminished, when the remaining weak spirit that distils over, called ‘faints,’ is caught separately, and mixed with the low wines preparatory to another distillation. The strongest spirit passes over first, and the condensed liquor gradually becomes weaker, until it ceases to contain alcohol. By receiving in separate vessels any given portion of the product, spirit of any required strength, within certain limits, may be obtained. ”

“ Every laboratory in America refutes it. Every sociologist knows better. Every scientist of reputation condemns it. The management of every great industrial interest, compelled by economic necessity, seeks its complete overthrow."
"The average beer drinker consumes more alcohol than the average whiskey drinker"
CHAPTER IV.
NON-ALCOHOLIC BEER
IS A MYSTERIOUS COMPOUND
OF DRUGS
Numerous Processes are now in use for making non-alcoholic beer and the ingredients used are usually cloaked in deep mystery. ”

“ Daily experience convinces us that the same quantity of alcohol, applied to the stomach under the form of natural wine, and in a state of mixture with water, will produce very different effects upon the body, and to an extent which it is difficult to comprehend; it has, for instance, been demonstrated that Port, Madeira, and Sherry, contain from one-fourth to one-fifth their bulk of alcohol, so that a person who takes a bottle of either of them, will thus take nearly half a pint of alcohol, or almost a pint of pure brandy! ”

“ Aside from all considerations of physical, mental, and moral injury wrought by the use of alcoholic drinks, every young man may well take into account the damaging effect of such a dangerous habit upon his business prospects. Careful business men are becoming more and more unwilling to take into their employ any person addicted to liquor drinking. ”

“ The Hudson Bay Company do not allow the men who work for them to use any kind of alcoholic liquors. Alcohol is a great deceiver, is it not? It makes a man think he is warmer, when he is really colder. Many men are frozen to death while drunk.
31. Alcohol in Hot Regions.—Bruce, Livingstone, and Stanley, and all great African travellers, condemn the use of alcohol in that hot country as well as elsewhere. The Yuma Indians, who live in Arizona and New Mexico, where the weather is sometimes much hotter than we ever know it here, have made a law of their own against the use of liquor. ”

“ By the Excise laws at present existing in this country, the various degrees of strength of brandy, rum, arrack, gin, whiskey, and other spiritous liquors, chiefly composed of little else than spirit of wine, are determined by the quantity of alcohol of a given specific gravity contained in the spiritous liquors of a supposed unknown strength. ”

“ The quantities of alcohol, water, and sugar in an imperial pint of Brandy, Rum, and Gin, are shown in the Case 39.
The physical degeneracy and moral degradation attendant upon taking alcohol in excess are well known; and no language is too strong to condemn the folly and wickedness of those who thus convert one of the blessings of Providence into a curse.
In Cases 38 the visitor will see samples of alcohol obtained from various sources; also a variety of flavored spirits, or “liqueurs,” from various countries, and a Japanese spirit or liqueur, distilled from rice, called “soke,” or “saki.” ”